As a fresh associate or a summer associate, getting assignments can seem as oppressive as a final exam in law school. While you are facing down an assignment from your new job, flashbacks to your Contracts final exam suddenly surface. Sitting before you lays the pressure to prove yourself in one final, cohesive effort.
After reading half of the exam, you start to choke under the pressure, and the words on the exam blur into what looks like Arabic. And you don’t know Arabic. The test is impossible. You have no idea what the answer is. Your palms are sweaty and the blank blue book stares back at you. Thankfully, you have a hidden weapon: your ability to “issue-spot.”
Unfortunately, when you get an assignment as a lawyer or summer intern, you don’t win points for excessive issue-spotting. Instead, the point at a firm is to cost-effectively complete the assignment. Admittedly, being efficient with your time can be difficult when the assignment is ambiguous and you are new. Fortunately – I think – most of my assignments as a newly-minted lawyer were clear-cut. Typical assignments included: “handle this court appearance”; “write this brief”; “get the judge to set bond and get the client out of jail”; and sometimes there was even shotgun research – “find out whether I have to file this petition today” (and it’s 4:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before court closes).
Research projects, however, can be fairly ambiguous. As a summer associate, most of the assignments you get are research-based. A painful lesson to learn is failing to properly understand an assignment and its parameters. That failure means that you waste a lot of time (read: firm’s money) and have to re-do some or all of your work. An article I recently read at abovethelaw.com recommends that you should never leave the office of your assignment-giver “without knowing the answer to eleven questions,” and listing the eleven pertinent questions (such as what form of answer are they looking for, what sources should be checked for the answers, etc.).
I happen to know an intern who must have read advice imploring her to ask several questions upon receipt of an assignment. Penny arrived at work at her new summer internship one day and had an e-mail from one of the partners with an assignment.
The partner, Sue Themall, wanted her to verify that one of the cases she planned on relying on at trial, State v. Rellygoodcase, was still valid.
Penny printed the e-mail, wrote down some follow-up questions, and scheduled a meeting with the Sue for that afternoon.
“Penny, I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ve come up with on State v. Rellygoodcase,” Sue said.
“I am as well. I spent all morning on it,” Penny said.
“That sounds about what the limit of time should be on that research,” Sue noted. (This is a smaller firm that is hired by clients with normal-sized pockets.)
“Well, I haven’t quite gotten there – you see, I have a few questions about the assignment,” Penny began.
Sue made a mental note to talk to Penny about how to bill that. “Alright, go ahead.”
“When I’m finished with my research, do you want me to discuss my conclusions with you?” Penny asked.
Penny waited for an answer while Sue appeared to be gazing at the wall behind her. No answer came. Penny forged ahead. “What secondary sources would you recommend that I check?”
“The trial is in three days.” Sue’s face became very red. Penny could not believe Sue had gotten bad Thai again.
“You really should stay away from that Thai place. Something about it does not seem to agree with you,” Penny sympathetically offered. Penny was quickly dismissed from the meeting. After Penny retreated to her desk, she was informed that an answer to the Sue’s question had been retrieved by a junior associate. It hasn’t been confirmed, but I’ve heard that Penny received typing assignments for the duration of her term as a summer associate at that firm.
You can’t really blame Sue in that situation. Instead of hammering away at eleven questions about the assignment, my advice to a new lawyer or intern would be that they should inform themselves about the answers to the eleven questions by first turning the lights on upstairs.
Some of the answers to basic questions about assignments you will get can be answered as soon as you step foot in the door of the firm.
Of course, there’s always the option to use the support staff to your advantage to clear up ambiguities and ask one or two questions directly to the assignment-giver when needed. But if you want hand-holding, asking your boss to do it is ill-advised.
If a summer intern ever began interrogating me about an assignment that I gave him/her, I would start to wonder what was wrong with that intern. But, it probably wouldn’t take me too long to come up with my answer. One word: gunner.
© 2011 Under Analysis LLC, Michelle St. Germain. You can reach Under Analysis LLC in care of this paper or by e-mail at comments@levisongroup.com.